Friday, August 26, 2011

Last weekend, I brewed up a batch of beer with my father in law (official title: "Assistant Brewmaster").

Here's our recipe:

Malt & Fermentables

10 lbs Rahr Two-Row

12 oz. Belgian Caramel Pils

4 oz. Briess Caramel 120L

Hops

.75 oz Chinook Pellets 60 mins

.5 oz Chinook Pellets 10 mins

.25 oz Falconer's Flight Pellets 10 mins

.25 oz Falconer's Flight Pellets 5 mins

.25 oz Chinook Pellets 1 min

.25 oz Falconer's Flight Pellet1 min

Spices

A Tiny Amount of Coriander and Grains of Paradise Thrown in Last Minute of Boil

Dry Hop

.5 oz Chinook Pellets

.5 oz Falconer's Flight Pellets

Total Bitterness 52.6 IBU

Yeast

Wyeast French Saison (3711)

Alcohol Content

6.0% ABV

Here are some pics from the brew day:

Heated 13.75 quarts of water to 165 degrees for the mash

Getting the grains ready to put in the mash tun

Transferred the water from the pot to the mash tun and mixed in the grain

The hops divided up by when they will be added to the boiling wort

We used Chinook and Falconer's Flight hops

Used a tiny amount of coriander and grains of paradise

While the grain was mashing for an hour at about 150 degrees, we heated up 22 quarts of water to 175 degrees for our sparge. After the hour of mashing was up, we added the sparge water to our sparge tank and started the run off. We ended up collecting about 6.33 gallons of wort for our boil.

The mash tun and sparge set up on my screened in patio.

We collected 6.33 gallons of wort and started the boil and added hops according to our recipe

Added Irish Moss with 15 minutes left in the boil. This helps produce a clearer beer

Close up shot of some hops we used

After an hour boil, we used a wort chiller to chill the wort down to 80 degrees

After putting the chilled wort in our fermenter, we added our French Saison Yeast

Original Gravity was supposed to be 1.050, we got 1.054. Nice and efficient!

Brew day is done. The reward is a glass of our previous batch: Saison

The beer started fermenting within 24 hours, and the air lock is still bubbling away 6 days later. It's starting to slow down though. The fermentation temp was about 70-72 degrees the first few days, and I let it slowly creep up to mid 70's. I will wait another week or so and then transfer the beer off the trub, and into the secondary fermenter where we will add our dry hops. Stay tuned for an update on this batch!

***Update***

I transferred the Belgian IPA to the secondary fermenter on Thursday night. I added 1/2 oz. each of the Chinook and Falconer's Flight Hops for the Dry Hopping. I took a gravity reading with the hydrometer and it read 1.004. This means the alcohol percentage of this beer will be approximately 6.7% ABV.